Homemade Bread | Pain Au Levain

I have a bit of a kitchen confession to make, and that is that I’ve never made traditional bread. I’ve made croissants, I’ve made cornbread, I’ve made cakes, muffins, and the like, but I’ve never made a straight-up old-fashioned loaf of fluffy and crusty bread. This is especially lame since I actually spent an intensive few days at King Arthur Flour headquarters a couple years ago learning to do just that, but just never carried through on making any once I got back home. But now, all that has changed. Yes, the years of storing away random bread facts and knowledge have finally come to fruition in the form of these beautiful loaves from the Model Bakery Cookbook.

The recipe is a very straightforward and traditional one. It requires patience, but little else. The ingredients are almost suspiciously simple; flour, water, salt, and yeast. And yet they make a bread with such rich and deep flavor that you’d swear that there was just some sort of seasoning or extra ‘oomph’ in there, but that’s just time doing its job. You start the levain or ‘poolish’ the day before, this is a very yeasty and watery dough mixture that is allowed to rise and fall overnight to allow the flavors to develop and deepen. Almost like aging a wine in oak barrels, the yeast needs time to interact with the flour to create nuances in the taste and texture of the final product.

The next day you add more flour, water, and salt to the levain to make the actual bread dough. There is a process of folding the dough, once every 20 minutes, for 1 hour. The dough is then transferred into a banneton and allowed to rise for another 2 hours before baking. A banneton is another word for a proofing bowl, which is the last container bread dough is allowed to rise in before baking. Traditional bannetons are made from wicker that is shaped into a spiral and heavily floured, which is where the bread gets its swirly pattern from. Once the bread has finished proofing, you can pop it in the oven onto a baking stone. Baking stones help bread and pizza retain a firm crust and similar baking environment to a professional baking oven, lending extra heat to the normal home oven. Just make sure to put the stone in the oven *before* you preheat it.

The result of all of this effort is a baked good unrivaled by any other. I will be the first to admit that I was damn proud of this bread. For my first legitimate loaf, the taste and texture was excellent and well worth the extra time it took to make. I can’t recommend trying this method of bread-baking highly enough, and now that I’ve had a taste I am most certainly going back for more. If you’re looking to dive head first into bread-baking (and the holidays are certainly the time to do it!) take a peek at Chronicle Books Eye Candy sale for their e-reader cookbooks, the Model Bakery cookbook and Tartine Bread cookbook have both been making appearances there for suuuuper discounted prices.

Homemade Bread | Pain au Levain

This is a traditional recipe for homemade bread that involves creating a yeast-based started that ages overnight. This develops the gluten within the dough and creates a deep and rich flavor that rushed bread recipes just don't have. The overnight rest is worth it, I promise!

Course
Appetizer

Cuisine
French

Keyword
bread

Servings12people

Calories265kcal

Ingredients

Levain

1/2cupwater

1tablespoonyeast

2/3cupbread flour

Bread Dough

3 1/3cupswater

5 3/4cupsplus 2 tablespoons bread flourplus more as needed

2/3cupwhole-wheat flour

1 1/2tablespoonsfine sea salt

Tools

28-inch bannetons

baking stone

Instructions

Levain

The night before baking, begin making the levain. Mix the water and yeast together in a small bowl. Add the flour and stir to make a thick batter. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 8 to 12 hours.

Bread Dough

The next day, combine the water and the levain in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment at low speed until combined. Add the flours, a little at a time, until a sticky dough forms. Turn off the mixer but do not remove the paddle from the dough. Cover the bowl and allow the mixture to rest for 20 minutes.

At low speed, add the salt until incorporated. Turn off the mixer and remove the paddle. Cover the bowl and allow to rest for 20 minutes.

As the flour absorbs more of the water, over time it will begin to look firmer. With wet hands, pull up one corner of the dough (still in the bowl), stretching it about 10 inches tall and fold it over the top of the dough. Repeat, once quarter of the bowl at a time. Cover the bowl and allow to rest 20 minutes.

Repeat the folding process and 20 minute resting period two more times.

Empty the dough from the bowl onto a well-floured work surface using a dough scraper. The dough will be tacky and ire, do not punch the dough down. Cut the dough in half and place one of the halves in front of you. Cupping your hands a bit, tuck down the sides around the dough, tucking them underneath the now round dough. Repeat with the other half of dough.

Generously flour 2 (8-inch) bannetons, or line 2 (8-inch) colanders with linen and flour them. Turn each dough ball upside down and place it in the banneton. Cover loosely and allow to rest until the dough has risen but has not quite doubled, about 2 hours.

Place your baker's stone in the oven on the lower 3rd rack. Fill a large casserole pan 3/4 with water and place it on the bottom rack of the oven. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit.

If you have a baker's peel, you can dust it with semolina flour and gently turn one loaf out onto the peel, then transfer the loaf from the peel to the baking stone. Or you can turn the loaf out directly from the banneton to the baking stone, but this has to be done quickly so as not to let all the heat out of the oven. Bake for 20 minutes, then lower the oven temperature to 450 degrees Fahrenheit and bake for another 20 minutes.

Remove the loaf and allow it to cool on a wire rack. Repeat this process with the other loaf. The bread can be wrapped in aluminum foil and stored at room temperature for up to 1 day, or in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.

Ah this looks so delicious. I just finished reading how to make country bread in Tartine Book 1 and I cannot wait to try it in my own kitchen. After seeing this, I am so excited to give it a try myself. Beautiful photography, as always. Cheers!

Thanks so much Ice!! I just bought the ebook of Tartine Bread, I've been wanting it for SO long and am really excited to try out some of their recipes. I've been to their bakery once when I was in San Francisco and it was ridiculously wonderful.

Now that the guy and I are settled in our new little house, we both want to get back into bread baking real bad. I made some awesome rolls for Thanksgiving, but this big ol' loaf is something I have to try! I love how you got those lines from the banneton on the crust so well.

The banneton is kind of my new favorite thing ever. The lines on the bread just look solo beautiful and fancy, but you really do have the flour it super well to keep the bread from sticking. My first loaf got a little stuck to it and so the loaf ended up being a bit warped on one side when I tried to turn it over and it was stuck in one small place. Definitely recommend getting one though, that design is lovely and perfect for proofing bread 😀

Whoa….this is gorgeous! Bread is gorgeous and so is this post. I'm actually learning sooo much about bread these days and I feel like there's so much more to know. I never have seen a baking stone–not to my knowledge at least–and now I see how those cool little spirals come about! And I really hope to try this someday soon because I'm obsessed with homemade everything, especially bread. I'm sure you wouldn't mind this being pinned, right? 😉 Hehe

Haha, feel free to pin away!! If you're looking to get into bread-making at home, I'd definitely recommend investing in a banneton and a baking stone, those will help you a ton with baking. And if you're ever in Vermont, stop by the King Arthur Flour shop there because they have really amazing baking classes and know a ton about making bread. Aldo, instead of buying a bread cloche to make the bread moist while you're baking it, you can just fill up a pan with water and have it sitting on the bottom shelf of the oven while you're baking, the evaporating water from the pan will keep the bread just as moist! 🙂

That bread is absolutely gorgeous! You should be super proud. My first loaves of bread were nowhere near that pretty or nuanced. Will definitely have to try this recipe the next time I'm craving fresh baked bread!

Hi there! Found you via Pinterest the other day, love your website! I am making this bread as I type, it is in the bannetons proofing. I don't know why but after the resting stages in the mixer bowl, I turned the dough out onto the counter and it was very thin. It starting spreading like hot lava LOL! I do believe I saved it though by incorporating another 1 1/2 cups of bread flour by hand until it was manageable but still tacky. Do you have any thoughts as to why this might have occurred? I live at sea level and was wondering if the difference might be altitude? Best, Ani in Wilmington, NC

Hi Kitty! Thanks so much! And it sounds to me like the bread may have risen too long or in too warm of a location. or a combination of both, when a dough rises too much it tends to get really tacky and sticky. Was it in direct sunlight or on a warm heating vent?

Just came across your recipe looking for a technique to make this rather moist dough into rolls. Try making this with dark rye flour instead of whole wheat and add a couple tablespoons of rye to the initial starter